


you are inked on my skin long before we begin

by milominderbinder



Series: maia's shameless fic a day in the month of may [4]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: AU, M/M, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 19:49:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1561952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milominderbinder/pseuds/milominderbinder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mickey’s always been scared of getting his words.  The words which start to show up a couple of weeks before you meet your soulmate, somewhere on your body, beginning so pale they’re barely legible and gradually fading into inky black; the words which will be the first your soulmate ever says to you. He’s hoped that he’ll be like Terry and never get them at all, because he knows that when he meets his soulmate, it’s gonna be a guy, and that’s <i>dangerous</i>, too dangerous to be worth it.</p><p>So of course, with his luck, he gets them when he’s only seventeen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you are inked on my skin long before we begin

Mickey’s always been scared of getting his words.

Curious, sure, but more scared.  He’s wondered where on his body they’ll show up - everyone in his family seems to get them on their chests, but there’s no guarantee he will too - and when they’ll show up, of course.  When the slow process will begin, his skin first turning splotchy, then the words fading in, starting out so pale they’re barely legible, gradually changing over the couple of weeks that follow until they’re inky black, signalling that the meeting is almost upon him.  He’s wondered what they’ll be, most of all, but has been afraid to wonder that, too.  In case they’re something that gives him away.

He doesn’t know what that could be - it’s not like many people randomly say things like, _hey, I’m a dude you must be gay as shit_ when they first meet strangers, so he’s not gonna end up with that tattooed all over him.  But there’s ways it could go wrong, still - if the guy introduces himself and has a name that’s clearly _male,_ Mickey could end up with that on his chest, his arm, the back of his neck, and that’d be fucking hard to hide.  His dad would kill him before Mickey even had a chance to _meet_ his soulmate.

So Mickey’s scared of his words, with good reason.  His only hope is the fact that in the south side, most people don’t find their soulmates young, some people not at all.  His dad’s never had his words.  Neither’s Tony, or his aunt Rande.  His mom had hers, before she died, but he never knew the story there, what had happened to that guy, because she’d been married to Terry since she was nineteen.

It’s the one part of his life in which he hopes to end up like his dad.  So, of course, because the universe hates him, he gets his words when he’s barely seventeen.

He’s not even remotely prepared for it when he finds out, either.  He’s in the middle of getting fucked, fast and hard and dirty, in the high school locker room.  He barely attends high school anymore, is on the verge of packing it in altogether, but it’s worth coming around every now and then because of the closeted jock on the football team who has a big dick - even if he’s not the best at using it for anyone’s pleasure but his own, Mickey will take what he can get.  So he’s getting fucked up against the lockers, as usual, and is getting pretty close to coming when suddenly the guy stops moving.

Confused, Mickey spins his head around, ready to tell TJ to get on with it or get out, but the guy’s curious expression stops him in his tracks.

“Hey, man, I think you’re getting your words,” TJ says, like it’s a passing observation, no big fucking deal.  “On your ass.  That or you have a rash.”

Mickey’s stomach suddenly feels like lead.  He closes his eyes, rests his head against the cold metal of the lockers for a moment.  Of fucking _course_ that’s where they’d be, as if it wasn’t obvious enough already that he loves taking it up the ass.  In a way it’s good - much less chance someone’s gonna accidentally see them this way, which is good even if they’re _not_ incriminating because he knows as soon as anyone finds out they’re gonna want to _meet_ the girl, and there’s no way Mickey will be able to come clean that it’s definitely gonna be a _guy._  But still.  This means he _is_ gonna meet the guy, and soon, in probably just a couple of weeks.  And after that, there’s not really gonna be any denying it any longer.

Mickey wonders if he’ll even be able to resist.  He’s always told himself that when he meets his soulmate, he’s not gonna do a thing about it.  Because that makes everything way too fucking _real._

“Can you read what they say?” he asks next, his voice cracking.  The guy pauses for a moment, presumably examining Mickey’s ass, which should be awkward but Mickey has bigger things on his mind.

“Ah, no, they’re still all pale and blurry.”

Mickey pauses for a second.  Takes a deep breath.

“Well, you gonna finish me off or what?”

\--

Three nights later, Mandy goes to a party.  He waits til he’s sure she’s gone, then heads into her room.  Locks the door and pushes a chair up against the handle too, for good measure.  She’s the only one who has a full length mirror.

When he’s in there, he drops his pants, puts his back to the mirror, and turns his head, trying to read the faint words which are scrawled there.  They’re still only a light tan colour, so clearly has has a little while to prepare for the meet itself, but still, they’re definitely _there._ Not just a rash, like he’d kind of been hoping.

He can’t read backwards, so he uses his shitty phone to take a picture of the reflection of his ass in the mirror and then looks at the photo.  The words there, scrawled across his left ass cheek in a messy all-caps handwriting, are -

Mickey holds his breath the second before he reads them, because _this is it,_ this is the rest of his life, he’s trying not to be excited because this makes things so much more complicated but he can’t help it, he has a soulmate and he’s about to find out what their first words to him will ever be -

_Dude, you dropped your eggplant._

Mickey sighs.

Of fucking _course_ he’d have something as dumb as that.

\--

Two weeks later to the day, he’s walking back from knocking over the grocery store three streets over, arms laden down with enough food to hopefully get them through his dad’s latest stint in the joint.  He passes Ian Gallagher in the street.  No big deal.  He’s in Mandy’s class and Mickey’s known him since they were kids - they were on the same little league team together, and Mickey’s done a few deals with his asshole brother, Lip.  Never really spoken to Ian, though, as far as he can remember.  Hasn’t had a reason to - even if the last year or so he’s checked out Ian’s body on more than one occasion, since puberty hit him _hard_ and left him with the kind of muscles Mickey likes to jerk off thinking about.  Still.  No big deal.

Until, three seconds after they pass each other, he hears Ian calling something to him.

“Dude, you dropped your eggplant.”

Mickey feels the grocery bags go tumbling out of his hands, but doesn’t even register when they thump to the ground, or when the milk carton explodes and soaks his sneakers.

\--

That night, he lies on his bed, staring up at the ceiling.  There’s a few glow-in-the-dark star stickers up there, left over from when he was a kid, though they’re mostly peeled off now, the ones still left dirty and lacking any actual _glow._

He thinks Ian Gallagher must think he’s a freak.

It’s somehow his biggest concern.  He’d heard his words, tumbling out of Ian’s mouth like they were _no big deal,_ which he guesses they weren’t, to Ian.  Ian didn’t know, so he’d said them, and Mickey had heard them, and he’d dropped his groceries, and then he’d realised what had happened and scooped everything back up into his arms as quick as he could, leaving half of it just lying there on the street, and he’d run off.

He hadn’t even said a word back to Ian.  He hadn’t wanted Ian to _know._

And now he’s left here.  Ian fucking Gallagher as a soulmate.  His life a hell of a lot more complicated.

\--

Mickey honestly, truly tries to stay away.

But as it turns out, he is a hopeless slave to fate.  Three days after he hears his words tumbling out of Ian’s mouth, he feels like he’s ready to itch right out of his skin, is turned wild and restless and _wanting._ He leaves the house, promising himself he’ll just walk by Gallagher for a second, just enough to catch a glimpse, and hope that’ll soothe him down a bit, enough to at least be able to catch a wink or two of sleep.

Of course, because Mickey has much less self control than he likes to give himself credit for, he ends up inside the Kash and Grab, walking up and down the aisles like what flavour of Doritos to get is the biggest fucking decision he’ll ever make in his life, sneaking not-so-secret glances at Ian.  Ian, who has his military-cut hair and bulging muscles and tight jeans, but still wears the dumb little red shop apron, like he’s twelve fucking years old.  Ian who is flicking through a magazine at the counter, not even paying attention to what Mickey’s doing.

Eventually Mickey walks out without paying for his pringles.  He’s half hoping Ian will say something, but instead Ian just shoots a dirty look at his back, stays silent.

\--

Mickey starts stealing from the Kash and Grab on a regular basis, even though it’s a block further away from his house than the store he usually goes to, and doesn’t stock the kind of Gatorade he likes.  Ian’s there Saturday mornings, and every day after school except Thursdays.  If those shifts happen to coincide with the times Mickey visits - well, nobody has to know that but him.

\--

He spends a month watching Ian, never saying a word.  Every single night, when he’s twisted up in his itchy sheets and the streetlamp outside his bedroom window is flickering, painting his room with a nervous kind of light, he dreams of Ian.

\--

Another month passes.

Mickey can see Ian getting more and more annoyed every time he steals something from the Kash and Grab.  He could stop, he knows - probably should, if he _ever_ intends to let Ian know about the whole soulmate thing, because he hardly wants Ian starting to hate him.  But he doesn’t, still, because if he stops going into the Kash and Grab then he stops seeing _Ian,_ and he knows he’s pathetic but that’s just something he can’t handle.

So he keeps stealing, and Ian keeps getting more and more pissed, but never saying anything.

Until the day when he does.

It’s a cold, grey-skied Wednesday, and Mickey’s stealing instant oatmeal from the Kash and Grab.  He figures that’s the kind of warm, winter food that he should be attempting to get Mandy to eat, since she’s been looking more and more stick-thin by the day recently.  He chooses a bunch of different flavours - one with cinnamon, one with chocolate, one with some kind of gross dried fruit in it that he figures is basically healthy.  When he’s picked out a handful of packets, he exits the store, lingering for just a moment to offer Ian a wave and a smirk.  Ignoring the way it makes his stomach flip just to look at Ian’s face.

Ten seconds later, he’s across the street, and he hears Ian calling after him.

“Hey, Mickey, why don’t you steal from a neighborhood you don’t live in?  Show some civic pride!”

Mickey has a thousand comebacks he could throw over his shoulder, each one with a different effect.  But - well, if he says them, if he says _anything,_ it’ll be the thing that’s written on Ian’s body, and then Ian will _know._

So instead Mickey just turns around, cocks an eyebrow, stares at Ian for one long, hard moment.

Ian stares back.

Which has never happened before.

Mickey is long, long used to his reputation preceding him.  Even back before he _had_ a reputation of his own, when he was just a scrawny kid in second hand clothes who mostly kept to himself, people would hiss at each other to stay away from him.  He’d hear them.   _That’s Mickey Milkovich.  Yeah,_ those _Milkoviches.  Stay away from him, his dad’s a maniac, his brothers will kill you if you look at him wrong!_  With that legacy, it wasn’t exactly hard for him to start scaring people all on his own.  He was a scrappy fighter, and his older brothers were all muscle and tended to follow him everywhere, so by the time he was ten years old, even most adults in their neighborhood were wary of him, let alone the kids.

He’d played that to his advantage, because he didn’t get many chances for _advantages,_ and it seemed a shame to waste it.

And now he’s staring at Ian Gallagher, a threat, Ian must _know_ it’s a threat, only Ian’s not looking away.  He’s the first one who’s ever looked at Mickey like that.  Challenging, not an ounce of fear clouding his expression.

Mickey looks away first.  Pretends like it’s no big deal, flips Ian the bird and continues walking, doesn’t say a word, doesn’t return the shit he stole or anything.

He’s shaking when he gets home.  The next time he goes into the Kash and Grab, he pays.  His purchases come to $12.49 and he only hands over a ten dollar bill, but Ian still looks like it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

Mickey thinks it’s worth swallowing a little bit of his own pride to put that look on Ian Gallagher’s face.  

\--

Mandy was born one year and one day after Mickey.  He didn’t celebrate a single one of his own birthdays growing up, always overshadowed by her, because she was younger and cuter and the only girl, the one their parents doted on to the full extent they knew how to dote.  They’d loved her most.  And he’d loved her too, reluctantly at first but eventually with a kind of devotion he’d never felt an ounce of for any of his other siblings.

He’d loved her, but he’d never been under the impression that she was anything other than a cutely-packaged mechanism for making his life more difficult.

When he’s seventeen, he is reminded of this fact tenfold, because when he’s seventeen she decides to become best friends with Ian Gallagher.

\--

The first time Mickey walks into his house and finds Ian sat on the couch, he thinks he’s going mad.  His shitstorm of a life has finally gotten to him.  He’s cracked.  He freezes in the doorway for a moment, no idea what to do, if he should run screaming in the other direction or just pretend like everything’s normal.

“Hey,” says Ian when he sees Mickey enter, sounding a little awkward but not nearly as much as he probably should.

Mickey just nods in response, bewildered, stares at him for a moment longer.

“Oh, I’m waiting for Mandy,” Ian tacks on, apparently realising that Mickey is going fucking _crazy_ not understanding what’s going on.  And - okay, Mickey knows Ian and Mandy are in the same class, but they’ve hung out before, he didn’t know they’d ever actually fucking _spoken,_ so it makes zero sense that Ian is here.

Still, he can’t say any of that.  Can’t say anything at all, without giving himself away.  So he just forces his feet to move, forces his gaze not to linger on the bare skin of Ian’s shoulder where his shirt has slipped to the side, and heads towards his room.

When he’s in there, he sees Mandy emerging from the bathroom, her skirt too short and shirt too low, made up like she’s going for a fucking photoshoot or something.

“Ian _Gallagher_?” he asks her quietly, standing too close to her and not caring, because he can’t help the fucking _ridiculous_ twinge of jealousy that’s settled in his stomach.

“Get over it,” she replies, rolling her eyes, though she doesn’t even know he _has_ anything to get over.  “He’s cool, we’re friends.  Hey, we’re gonna sneak into a movie, wanna come?”

Usually when Mandy invites him to shit like that he takes her up on the offer, since he rarely has anything better to do and Mandy’s one of the few people he actually finds remotely fun to be around.  But the thought of being anywhere _near_ Ian for such an extended period of time creates such a violent reaction in his body, half pain and half terrifying anticipation of pleasure, that he turns her down with a single sharp shake of his head.

She shrugs at him, curls her lip.

“Suit yourself.”

\--

Months pass, and Ian Gallagher seems to _always_ be around.  Playing video games with Mandy on the couch, eating with her at the kitchen table, holed up in her bedroom laughing so loud it echoes around the whole house, walking through Mickey’s room to take a piss.  Mickey can’t take a step in his own house without finding himself closer to Ian than he feels he can safely be.

It sucks, because when he’d just been seeing Ian in tiny broken moments, all he’d really had to focus on was the way Ian looked and spoke and sometimes the sound of his laugh, if Mickey was lucky enough to catch one of those occasions.  And Ian had been gorgeous and funny and made Mickey’s heart flip in ways that were closer to horrific than lovely, but still, that had been all there was to him.  Mickey had _known_ Ian was his soulmate, but in a way, it hadn’t really been true, yet.

Only when he’s over at Mickey’s house every single fucking day, Mickey can’t help it - he _watches._ Ian with Mandy is relaxed, he’s playful and fun, he’s what he must be like usually, when he’s not at work or school, which are the only times Mickey has ever really seen him.  He makes jokes about old films sometimes, which Mandy never gets but Mickey always does, laughs silently to himself from around whatever corner he’s been listening from.  Ian sucks at video games but makes great scrambled eggs, can shoot a gun better than Mickey and also dye Mandy’s hair so her highlights are _just right,_ chews with his mouth open and doesn’t smoke as much as Mickey and can’t hold his booze and laughs like a fucking maniac at kids’ TV shows which shouldn’t be funny to anyone over the age of five.

Mickey doesn’t say a word to Ian, still, for three more months of this shit, but what he _does_ is fall fucking head over fucking heels in fucking deep-shit love.

He stops stealing from the Kash and Grab just to get a _break_ from it all.

\--

He leaves his bedroom door open when Ian and Mandy are in the kitchen, just so he can hear them talk.  Sits in the kitchen when they’re on the couch, so he can hear Ian’s laugh and the way he swears when Mandy kicks his ass at halo.  Sits with them on the front steps when the days start to get warm, drinking beers but never saying a word, just listening to Ian and ignoring whatever Mandy says.

Summer comes and Ian starts wearing less clothes.  Mickey goes crazier by the minute.

\--

One night, Ian and Mandy stay up too late, getting high in Mandy’s room and giggling like little kids.  It’s dark out by the time they come to their senses, and Ian decides to sleep over.

The next morning, Mickey wakes up to the sound of the shower running.  Groans, because it had dragged him away from a particularly delectable dream about Ian rimming him - he has the morning wood to prove it.  He wonders who’s in the shower, how long they’ll be, if he could kick them out to take care of his boner.

Pretty much as soon as he has that thought, though, the water shuts off.  He hears someone thumping around in the bathroom for a few moments, and then the door swings open, and the culprit of the noise emerges into Mickey’s room.

It’s Ian.  Wet haired and bare-chested, his jeans pulled on hastily, unbuttoned, clinging to his legs where he’d clearly not dried himself from the shower properly.  Mickey’s dick twitches as soon as he sees Ian, and Ian freezes when he sees that Mickey’s awake.  Stares at him.

Their eyes meet, and Mickey tries not to think about the fact that he has a very obvious erection tenting his sheets.

When Ian just keeps staring at him, not saying a word, Mickey swallows, hard.  It would be so easy, he thinks, to say something in that moment.  Anything.  From the hostile to the sweet to the suggestive.   _The fuck are you looking at, douchebag_ to _you wanna come and take care of this for me_ with an eyebrow raised.  But no matter what he said, it’d give him away.

He says nothing, and just stares.  He’s not ready yet.  Isn’t sure if he ever will be.

Ian stares back.  He doesn’t _know,_ of course, he can’t know, has no way of knowing how deeply he is connected to Mickey, how deeply they always _will_ be connected, as long as they’re both alive.  But it seems like he knows _something,_ or feels something at least.

For a moment, it seems like maybe he wants Mickey, just as badly as Mickey wants him.

Then he breaks their gaze and leaves Mickey’s room, and everything is secret and shit, all over again.

\--

“Does your brother ever _speak?”_ he hears Ian mutter to Mandy one time.  He nearly laughs, but forces himself to hold it it.  He’s hovering outside Mandy’s bedroom door, not even bothering to pretend it’s for any other reason than the fact he saw Ian go in there with her a minute ago, and he doesn’t want to give himself away.

“Who, Mickey?” Mandy responds, sounding bored.  “Ignore him, he’s just the grumpiest fuckwad to ever live.”

That stings.  Not because Mandy’s saying it - he knows she’s partly joking, because they’ve always been the closest of all their siblings, actually kind of get along, and teasing comes with that package.  But because of who she’s saying it to.  Mickey _knows_ it’s ridiculous, knows he’s had a million chances to speak to Ian and that _he’s_ the one who’s stopping them from knowing each other, because he’s afraid and stubborn and confused as shit.  But still.  The idea that all Ian knows about him is his reputation, the fact that he steals from the store, Mandy’s hostile descriptions - it fucking stings.

He wonders if, even if he _told_ Ian, Ian wouldn’t want him as a soulmate.  Would turn him down.  Settle for someone else instead, because clearly the universe has made some kind of _grand_ cosmic fuck up.  Ian’s too fucking good for Mickey.

The more Mickey thinks about it, the more he realises that Ian’s words on his skin just don’t make _sense._ Ian’s better than good, and Mickey - well, he’s anything _but._

\--

He doesn’t mean to tell Mandy.

It just sort of - happens.

It was probably inevitable, in a way, he decides later.  He’s been going fucking _crazy_ keeping this shit to himself, unable to stop thinking about Ian for a single second of the day but unable to _do_ anything about it either.  He spends half his time jerking off and the other half battling an existential crisis; he was bound to snap at some point.

Still, it’s a pretty random time for it to happen.  Ian’s just left after hanging out with Mandy the whole afternoon, and Mickey and Mandy are sat down at the table, eating poptarts for dinner and not talking about much.  Mickey can’t get Ian out of his head, because Ian and Mandy had been playing with water pistols in the yard, since the day was blistering hot, and Ian had taken his shirt off.

Mickey’s not sure he’s actually ever _seen_ as many muscles on a guy as there are on Ian Gallagher, but he is sure that it’s gonna drive him crazy for the rest of his life.

So, he and Mandy are sat in mostly silence, eating their poptarts at the table, and suddenly Mickey just can’t contain it any longer.

“Hey,” he says, and his voice breaks and he has to clear his throat and he can feel himself sweating with nerves.  “I, uh.  I.”

He can’t get the words out.  Mandy rolls her eyes at him.

“What is it?  You look constipated.”

“Ian’s my soulmate.”

He blurts it out, without even thinking about how to phrase it, what Mandy’s reaction is gonna be.  Then he takes a big bite of poptart, and waits for the fallout.

Mandy doesn’t respond for ten seconds.  Just stares at him.  Her jaw hanging open; he can see a half-chewed lump of poptart on her tongue.  After the ten seconds, she spits it out onto her plate, coughs a couple of times, then looks up at him again, eyes bugging out of her head.

“ _What?”_ she hisses, leaning in close like she has to be secret, even though they’re the only ones in the house - Mickey wouldn’t have said it if they weren’t.

“I, uh, got my words, back in January.  And.  It was Ian.”

“But you’re not - you’re not _gay.”_

“Obviously I _am,_ alright.  Maybe I don’t go shouting it all over town, but whatever.”

“Ian never said _anything_ to me.”

“He, uh.  Doesn’t know.”

Mickey feels a little guilty after he admits that, thumbs at his lip, suddenly deflating from his huffed-up anger of just a moment ago.  Mandy looks like she might have a fuckin’ stroke.

“ _How_ can he not _know_?”

“I haven’t actually ever said a fuckin’ word to him,” Mickey admits, feeling as close as he ever gets to sheepish.  Mandy pauses for one long moment before she hits him on the arm, hard.

“You _douchebag,”_ she cries, hits him again, ignoring his yell of protest.  “You know he thinks there’s something _wrong_ with him?  Because he got his words months ago and nobody’s ever said them to him?  He thinks the guy doesn’t _want_ him or something.”

“I -” says Mickey, starts to attempt to explain himself, even though he doesn’t have a clue how he’s gonna do that, but Mandy cuts him off with a glare.

“You _do_ want him, right?” she checks, voice turning dark.  Fuck.  Mickey had realised Ian and Mandy were friends, best friends even, but he hadn’t really thought about how big of a deal that was - Mandy who’d never really had friends, growing up, who had always been too hostile and reserved, had learned early on that to like someone was to be vulnerable and being vulnerable only ever resulted in the worst fucking kind of pain.  She’s opened herself up, to Ian, and that’s a _big_ fucking deal, and Mickey suddenly gets the feeling that she’ll kill him, if he fucks things up with Ian more than he already has.

“Of course I _want_ him,” he says, partly to calm her down but also partly because of how fucking _true_ it is.  “How could anyone _not,_ Jesus, he’s fucking perfect.  I just - it’s too difficult, okay.  It’s too fucked up.  If anyone found out, they’d fucking kill us.”

Mandy apparently doesn’t take that as a good excuse, because she starts hitting him again, her skinny fists battering into his arms and chest over and over again, surprisingly strong.

Mickey doesn’t even tries to fight back.  He gets it.  He wants to protect Ian more than anything, too.

\--

He breaks on a Sunday.

Ian and Mandy are making something in the kitchen.  Stew, maybe, or soup, all Mickey knows is it involves a fuckload of vegetables and a lot of laughing, and they’re passing a joint back and forth between them as they cook so whatever it is they’re making is gonna be tinged with the taste of smoke and bitter-sweet weed, which Mickey thinks will actually be an improvement on their usual cooking.

Mickey’s wandering around the living room, pretending like he’s actually tidying up or some shit, just so he has an excuse to watch what Ian’s doing.  Mandy keeps catching him at it and sending him these _looks,_ like she thinks he’s the most pathetic thing on the face of the planet and she probably wouldn’t even bother to scrape him off the bottom of her shoe if she stepped on him in the street, but he can’t bring himself to care.  Ian’s wearing cut offs and a t-shirt that’s a little too big for him, exposes a bit more of his shoulder than it should, and his hair is growing out a little longer these days, and everything about him drives Mickey crazy.

What drives Mickey most crazy is when he hears what Ian and Mandy are talking about.

“I don’t think I’m _ever_ gonna get my soulmate,” Mandy’s complaining, and Ian laughs a little, though Mickey can tell she’s not really joking.

“Hey, better never getting one than having your words show up but never actually _hearing_ them,” Ian says, and Mickey freezes in his tracks.  It’s the first time he’s heard Ian mention that, and he’s seen glimpses of Ian’s words, sometimes, they’re on the inside of his bicep and occasionally when he’s been messing around in the garden with Mandy or raising a video controller especially high Mickey’s caught _glimpses_ , but he’s never actually seen what they _say,_ only that they’re scrawled in a handwriting that is unmistakably his, and that they’re _there._ Have been for a while.  Probably since that very first day when Ian had spoken to him and Mickey hadn’t said anything back.

Mickey turns around, slowly, takes a couple of steps towards the kitchen.  Mandy’s chopping peppers.

Ian’s chopping an eggplant.

Mickey thinks about the words on his left ass cheek, about the day he’d heard Ian say them, _dude you dropped your eggplant,_ about how he’s replayed that moment so many times in his head, thought of all the different ways it could have gone if he’d said something back, _anything_ back.  Thinks about how Ian’s hot as fuck and funny as shit, about how Ian seems somehow kind to his core but still ten times more badass than Mickey, about how everything Ian does seems fucking perfect, even when he messes up he’s somehow still perfect, even when Mickey finds himself _furious_ Ian’s still perfect.

He thinks about how Ian is trying to hide the hurt in his voice when he talks about the soulmate who never showed up, but how Mickey can still hear it there, can see it in the downturn of Ian’s eyes, the way his voice raises just a little at the end of his sentence.

He looks at Ian chopping eggplant, his fingers shaking, just a little.

And then he can’t help himself.   _Breaks._ Storms into the kitchen, his legs moving without even consulting the rest of him, walks right up to Ian, grabs his neck, roughly, pulls him close.

Says the words which will change everything.

_“It’s me, asshole.”_

\--

Later, when Ian and Mickey are in Mickey’s bed, fucking like the sheets are on fire and they need to put them out with their come, Mickey will feels Ian’s arms wrap around him, Ian’s lips sucking on his neck.  He’ll shift his eyes over, just a little, and see the inside of Ian’s bicep where it’s braced next to his head.  Will see the words scrawled there - _his_ words.

Ian will laugh slightly, and dig his fingers into Mickey’s ass, hard.  It will feel like being owned, in a way.  It will also feel like being more free than he’s ever been.

**Author's Note:**

> for the ‘fic a day in may’ challenge; idea from this post.
> 
> send me fic prompts on tumblr: mickeymilk.


End file.
